A potential change I'm keen to hear your thoughts on

The problem really is mostly down to cloak. I didn't go for MoM in my AA/EB caster build and I wanted a lighting coil because I wanted physical mitigation, yes on top of AA because it doesn't do enough.

And when you look at it, Lightning Coil and Cloak of Defiance. Two very defensive high cost uniques that have an inherent unique ability to benefit the defense of casters. So what would you want? 30% less physical damage to still be taken as lightning damage, or 30% less damage from all sources.

Its beyond broken and that is the underlying problem, AA/EB on their own are totally fine. Its not for free, have you ever played one of these builds? You are pretty much designated to run Discipline to keep AA at a higher level and then manage to drop it as you upgrade into end-game gg gear which needs to be very stat specific just for one portion of an average physical mitigation. It's totally balanced in its own right.

The problem is MoM and it needs to be nerfed as I suggested earlier, to either down to 20% or what I like more, to make it 30% of one source (physical/spell/projectile/etc) not ALL sources. Its a much better way to balance the combo problem without completely throwing the build (and AA as a skill along with it) out of the window.

P.S. Nerf Cloak, its a ridiculous item.

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Lachesys wrote:

The problem really is mostly down to cloak. I didn't go for MoM in my AA/EB caster build and I wanted a lighting coil because I wanted physical mitigation, yes on top of AA because it doesn't do enough.

And when you look at it, Lightning Coil and Cloak of Defiance. Two very defensive high cost uniques that have an inherent unique ability to benefit the defense of casters. So what would you want? 30% less physical damage to still be taken as lightning damage, or 30% less damage from all sources.

Its beyond broken and that is the underlying problem, AA/EB on their own are totally fine. Its not for free, have you ever played one of these builds? You are pretty much designated to run Discipline to keep AA at a higher level and then manage to drop it as you upgrade into end-game gg gear which needs to be very stat specific just for one portion of an average physical mitigation. It's totally balanced in its own right.

The problem is MoM and it needs to be nerfed as I suggested earlier, to either down to 20% or what I like more, to make it 30% of one source (physical/spell/projectile/etc) not ALL sources. Its a much better way to balance the combo problem without completely throwing the build (and AA as a skill along with it) out of the window.

P.S. Nerf Cloak, its a ridiculous item.

MoM is not unbalanced for spell casters. Especially when you consider they are adding a new fortify buff to give melee 30% reduced damage from all sources.

If MoM is OP, why would they be adding the fortify buff?

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Lachesys wrote:

And when you look at it, Lightning Coil and Cloak of Defiance. Two very defensive high cost uniques that have an inherent unique ability to benefit the defense of casters. So what would you want? 30% less physical damage to still be taken as lightning damage, or 30% less damage from all sources.

It's bullshit. Have you ever played comparable chars using CoD and Coil or just speculating?

Coils is much better than CoD in any scenario you can afford it, it's just incomparable, chars in CoD feels much more fragile than in Coil in any time.

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tmaciak wrote:

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Lachesys wrote:

And when you look at it, Lightning Coil and Cloak of Defiance. Two very defensive high cost uniques that have an inherent unique ability to benefit the defense of casters. So what would you want? 30% less physical damage to still be taken as lightning damage, or 30% less damage from all sources.

It's bullshit. Have you ever played comparable chars using CoD and Coil or just speculating?

Coils is much better than CoD in any scenario you can afford it, it's just incomparable, chars in CoD feels much more fragile than in Coil in any time.

I have this suspicion that GGG wants spells casters to use ES more often than life. And, thanks to EB, non-rich spell casters almost always choose life over ES.

Instead of destroying EB, GGG should do something to make ES playable without needing to spend 1000 exalts.

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Khoranth wrote:

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tmaciak wrote:

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Lachesys wrote:

And when you look at it, Lightning Coil and Cloak of Defiance. Two very defensive high cost uniques that have an inherent unique ability to benefit the defense of casters. So what would you want? 30% less physical damage to still be taken as lightning damage, or 30% less damage from all sources.

It's bullshit. Have you ever played comparable chars using CoD and Coil or just speculating?

Coils is much better than CoD in any scenario you can afford it, it's just incomparable, chars in CoD feels much more fragile than in Coil in any time.

I have this suspicion that GGG wants spells casters to use ES more often than life. And, thanks to EB, non-rich spell casters almost always choose life over ES.

Instead of destroying EB, GGG should do something to make ES playable without needing to spend 1000 exalts.

This...

Also the drawbacks of CI are so much that limits so much the gearing options.

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Khoranth wrote:

The new EB is not worthless, it is just worthless for spell casters. It will be a fantastic new way for melee/archer to run lots of auras, due to the extremely low mana cost of their abilities, getting zealots oath and 1-2 life regen nodes will give melee/archers a new way to run many auras. Unfortunately, spell casters will not have this option, due to the extremely high mana cost of spells

GGG needs to rename the new EB to something that has to do with melee/archer and auras, and move it away from the witch tree.

you really think thats realistic tho? ZO for an archer? ZO is in templar, which is the opposite corner to the bow nodes and on the other side of the top to EB. For melee? What melee char is spanning Templar to Shadow area across the top? Ci Dagger? So CI Dagger EB? Obviously not.

Do melee need auras like that? Youd have to spec into reduced reserve, ZO, life regen, EB, get es gear....

What do you really need as melee/bows? Grace + Hatred, thats it, no mana nodes, no EB, sit in the bottom half of the tree spanning Ranger to Marauder or the right of the tree spanning Duelist to Shadow for a crit thing. Life regen for sure, for your actual life, not to sustain mana, you can sustain mana with 2% mana leech and youre done, 1 gear stat. Then all points into life, life regen, damage and defense. I dont see how going anywhere near EB + ZO, speccing a load of reduced reserve nodes, losing ur life regen and then wearing energy shield gear that gives up your defense stats is ever going to be worth it for melee or bows at all to sustain mana given those builds dont really have any mana issues to start with and you would give up so much more than an extra aura is doing for you to make it work.



edit: sry man just seen the move it away from the witch tree bit, ya sure if it was somewhere on the left hand side so that you can get that node and zo without going all over the place then maybe more elemental melee builds on the left hand side i can see it, but I dont see it for bows.

So you are saying the new EB is 100% worthless? Not just worthless for spell casters.

So only summoners, and maybe some oddball elemental melee build may find it useful?

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Zed_ wrote:

How do you even sustain non-selfcast spells with this newly ruined EB? 6-Link traps, mines and totems can easily cost 200+ mana and you can place multiple per second. You can't dampen the mana cost with Spell Echo and you can't use Mana Leech or leech to your ES with Ghost Reaver. Never mind the new unique staff that lets you lay 7-link mines with insane speed resulting in 800-1000+ mana consumption per second, could hardly sustain that with even q20 Reduced Mana and Conc Effect. BM could work for totems as it has since they are the one of the three that can build in the vicinity of BM.

I'm also concerned about the defensive/mitigation options of ES characters but I will reserve my judgement about that for later.

I think that's what the beta is for. GGG moved supports earlier so it's clear they want to rebalance the cost of skills. There's are a lot of complaints that their current builds can't cast their spells with this change which is true. But the skills are all getting their mana cost changed anyways. Someone on reddit calculated (from data mined info) that you could still run a level 25 AA on the beta still even with the EB changes which was part of the change in the first place. So it's not like GGG said let's break all EB builds permanently. The change was to fix the balance problem of those high mana costs in the first place. With this change, other builds can take advantage of AA which is good and GGG can lower the mana costs significantly and it will still be a meaningful skill cost.

The OP asked for opinions on the EB change, as if inside a bubble. So people are giving them.

hmh that sound so good. cant wait to get a key.